In a recent issue of Lucky Peach, chef David Chang said that Mapo Galbi in Koreatown was his favorite restaurant to eat at in the world. Chang sometimes has lapses in taste, but in general he is someone you want to pay attention to when the subject turns to food: You could spend a blissful weekend...

Fernando Lopez Mateos opened the original Guelaguetza restaurant on 8th Street in Koreatown in August 1994, a restaurant that would become a Los Angeles institution serving the moles, tlayudas and banana-leaf-wrapped tamales of Oaxaca. When Lopez Mateos first moved to Los Angeles from Mexico, he...

A perfectly balanced breakfast sandwich the size of your head goes a long way toward improving the prospects of almost any day. (And there’s nothing like it for curing a hangover.) It has to have melted cheese, protein (preferably crisp bacon), eggs (of course) and bread (from tortilla to loaf,...

Maybe it was the rise of kouign amann -- the uber-buttery, caramelized "it" pastry from Brittany -- and better access to fresh-baked baguettes that lately has helped reinvigorate an Angeleno culture of neighborhood bakeries, all butter and sugar and love. There's a bakery out there to suit any...

You're a coffee fiend keeping track of every new specialty coffee shop that opens in L.A.? With one new cafe opening after another, it's not so easy anymore. But it is a lot easier to come across a great brewed coffee or perfect pull of espresso, whether in south Santa Monica or North Hollywood,...

It's easy to succumb to a faux-Cronut addiction. Intrigued by a meta-pastry trend, I've eaten every version of the croissant-doughnut hybrid in Los Angeles that I could find, from Spudnuts in Canoga Park to DK's Donuts in Santa Monica. I've had the original Cronut, the "half-croissant, half doughnut"...